Tuesday, February 7, 2023 | 12:10 p.m.
As a result of the homicide perpetrated by the eight rugby players, it is possible to remember two similar events that occurred in the missionary capital, with young people involved, which disturbed the inhabitants of Tierra Colorada at the time.
Those of Pincha Centeno and Iván Mercol were two crimes that moved society and changed the night of Posada forever. Friends and family remember the tragic events and the changes that were made to the legislation.
On the one hand, Francisco Javier ‘Pincha’ Centeno died on September 22, 2002 as a result of injuries caused by a fight with young people in the Posadeño microcenter. The alleged aggressors were benefited with the lack of merit.
That Saturday night, Pincha Centeno went out with his friends. The routine was to have a drink somewhere downtown.
Then he went to El Ángel, a nightclub that was located on Córdoba street, and he stayed there until almost dawn, when he was taken out by the guards after leading an incident with other young people.
The opponents met again in front of a building under construction that was on 3 de Febrero street.
El Pincha Centeno was a student at the Martín de Moussy National School.
According to the witness accounts, Carlos Silvestrini and Lucio Mariani beat the Pincha, who fell to the ground, where he remained while the attackers drove off in a car.
Moments later, his friend Alexis Rafstópolo picked him up and helped him to his house, where he vomited and then went to sleep.
Around noon, when his father, Jorge Centeno, woke him up for lunch, the young man told him “I’m sick, my head hurts,” which is why he let him sleep a little longer. When he went to wake him up around 1:00 p.m., he found him in cardiorespiratory arrest and immediately took him to the sanatorium, where the doctors could do nothing to save his life.
His death opened a wide debate in the society of Posada at that time, because after it, campaigns and meetings were held to work against violence against young people.
On the other hand, the other case that shocked Posadeña society occurred on March 19, 2006 in a nightclub in the capital of Misiones, when violence once again claimed a life. A fight, the fatal outcome and a trial that sentenced two people to 4 years in effective prison. However, an appeal to the Superior Court of Justice ended up reducing the suspended sentence to 3 years and generating indignation and discomfort in the boy’s family.
Iván Mercol died after a fight in the Power bowling alley, as a result of the injuries he received.
On October 17, 2014, the court sentenced Diego Cantallops and Sebastián Ruiz to four years in prison for the act.
In his ruling, Judge César Raúl Jiménez had assured that on March 19, 2006 there was a scene “of events against Iván” that put him “in a situation of weakness before two aggressors who hit from one side and the other” inside the dance establishment .
“It is not debatable under any type of view that both defendants chose the head as the target of their blows,” the magistrate remarked.
For the ministers, it was an act of homicide in a fight (typified in article 95 of the Argentine Penal Code).
In addition, they ordered that once a week, for three years, the convicts do community work in a prison.
